Monday, 12 August 2013

Eyewitness Korea

Andy Brooks makes his point

by New Worker

correspondent

THE KOREAN people marked the 60th
anniversary of the defeat of US imperialism and its lackeys with a great parade
through Pyongyang last month. And last Saturday friends and comrades gathered
in central London to hear an eye-witness account of the commemorations and
peace marches held in the DPR Korea to mark the end of the Korean War.

Dermot Hudson,
who spent a week in the DPR Korea, told the meeting of his impressions when he
joined hundreds of thousands of Korean workers to see the great demonstration
of Democratic Korea’s defence forces on 27th July. He also took part
in the reunification march and visited Panmunjom on the ceasefire line where
the Americans were forced to accept an armistice.

Dermot from theJuché Idea
Study Group said: "The situation in the DPRK is extremely good. Pyongyang
is alive with massive construction work everywhere including many new apartment
blocks. Since I last visited the DPRK in September 2012 many new
cultural-leisure facilities such as the Ryugyong Health Complex have opened. On
our way to Kaesong and Sinchon we could see crops growing in the fields well.
There were maize plants as tall as a person. The rice looked lush and green,
the beautiful rice paddies seemed to stretch for miles."

Dermot’s
report was followed by an opening on
the Korean War by Shaun Pickford and an intervention by NCP leader Andy Brooks
on Korean friendship and theJuché Idea. A
question and answer session, which soon developed into a general discussion,
took up the rest of an afternoon getting to know Democratic Korea and standing
by the Korean people, who daily defy the threats and sanctions of US-led
imperialism.

The
meeting was organised by the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) which
regularly organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London
throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the NCP, RCPB (ML),
Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the European Regional Society for the Study of
the Juché Idea on the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular
events in London.